Except tax revenues increased after the cuts. But hey, don't let facts stand in your way. The wars had nothing to do with the housing bubble caused by Bawney and Dodd. How the fuck did you ever manage to get an MBA?

Well I guess Benny is right for one....it is the most important and defining speech of Obama's presidency. He has finally come out of the lib/progressive closet and gone full on communist. He is without any shread of doubt the worst politician in the history of this country. He won't stop until he's destroyed everything we've built since 1776. You fucking lib pieces of shit who elected this asshole will never ever be forgiven. It would be like forgiving the assholes who supported Hitler. I know..we're all nuts yet every day ..thread after thread here...news cast after news cast all we here is how he has failed...yet some of you still support him. 240 you should be ashamed. Look around..are things better under Barry? He has failed. Its not enough he quit..he needs to move as well.

Yesterday: Obama Preaches Class Warfare To The 99% — Today: Meets With His 1% Backers At $38,500 Per Person Fundraiser…

Hypocrisy, thy name is Barack Hussein Obama.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has met with a small number of donors at a Washington fundraiser to benefit his re-election bid.

Democratic Party officials say about 20 people attended the fundraiser at The Jefferson hotel in downtown Washington. Tickets cost $35,800 a person, with the money going to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising account by the Democratic Party and Obama’s re-election campaign.

The White House says the event was closed to the media because the president wasn’t making formal remarks.

President Obama in his remarks at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kansas said, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what's at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.

[youtube]

#1... I don't give a fucking rat's ass what he says, I want to see what he does. I'm not interested in dipshits who are impressed with what a politician says, that shit is for the suckers. Judge a man by his deeds, not his words. In that area, Obama is fucking worse than Bush.

Election '12: One thing is certainly true about President Obama - no matter how many times people point out the falsehoods in his speeches, he just keeps making them. Case in point: his latest "economic fairness" address.

In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama's argument rests on a pile of untruths. Among the most glaring:

• Tax cuts and deregulation have "never worked" to grow the economy. There's so much evidence to disprove this claim, it's hard to know where to start. But let's begin with the fact that countries with greater economic freedom - lower taxes, less government, sound money, free trade - consistently produce greater overall prosperity.

Here at home, President Reagan's program of lower taxes and deregulation led to an historic two-decade economic boom. Plus, states with lower taxes and less regulation do better than those that follow Obama's prescription.

Obama also claimed the economic booms in the '50s and '60s somehow support his argument. This is utter nonsense. Taxes at the time averaged just 17% of the economy. And there was no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Departments of Transportation, Energy or Education, and no EPA. Had Obama been around then, he would have decried it all as un-American.

• Bush's tax cuts on the rich only managed to produced "massive deficits" and the "slowest job growth in half a century." Budget data make clear that Obama's spending hikes, not Bush's tax cuts, produced today's massive deficits.

And Obama only gets his "slowest job growth" number by including huge job losses during his own term in office. Also, monthly pre-recession job growth under Bush was about 40% higher than post-recession growth has been under Obama.

• During the Bush years, "we had weak regulation, we had little oversight." This is patently false. Regulatory staffing climbed 42% under Bush, and regulatory spending shot up 50%, according to a Washington University in St. Louis/George Washington University study. And the number of Federal Register pages - a proxy for regulatory activity - was far higher under Bush than any previous president.

• The "wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century." Fact: the federal income tax code is now more progressive than it was in 1979, according to the Congressional Budget Office. IRS data show the richest 1% paid almost 40% of federal income taxes in 2009, up from 18% back in 1980.

• We can keep tax breaks for the rich in place, or make needed investments, "but we can't do both." Not true. Repealing the Bush tax cuts on the "rich" would raise only about $70 billion a year, a tiny fraction of projected deficits. With or without the Bush tax cuts, the country can't afford Obama's agenda.

Election '12: One thing is certainly true about President Obama - no matter how many times people point out the falsehoods in his speeches, he just keeps making them. Case in point: his latest "economic fairness" address.

In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama's argument rests on a pile of untruths. Among the most glaring:

• Tax cuts and deregulation have "never worked" to grow the economy. There's so much evidence to disprove this claim, it's hard to know where to start. But let's begin with the fact that countries with greater economic freedom - lower taxes, less government, sound money, free trade - consistently produce greater overall prosperity.

Here at home, President Reagan's program of lower taxes and deregulation led to an historic two-decade economic boom. Plus, states with lower taxes and less regulation do better than those that follow Obama's prescription.

Obama also claimed the economic booms in the '50s and '60s somehow support his argument. This is utter nonsense. Taxes at the time averaged just 17% of the economy. And there was no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Departments of Transportation, Energy or Education, and no EPA. Had Obama been around then, he would have decried it all as un-American.

• Bush's tax cuts on the rich only managed to produced "massive deficits" and the "slowest job growth in half a century." Budget data make clear that Obama's spending hikes, not Bush's tax cuts, produced today's massive deficits.

And Obama only gets his "slowest job growth" number by including huge job losses during his own term in office. Also, monthly pre-recession job growth under Bush was about 40% higher than post-recession growth has been under Obama.

• During the Bush years, "we had weak regulation, we had little oversight." This is patently false. Regulatory staffing climbed 42% under Bush, and regulatory spending shot up 50%, according to a Washington University in St. Louis/George Washington University study. And the number of Federal Register pages - a proxy for regulatory activity - was far higher under Bush than any previous president.

• The "wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century." Fact: the federal income tax code is now more progressive than it was in 1979, according to the Congressional Budget Office. IRS data show the richest 1% paid almost 40% of federal income taxes in 2009, up from 18% back in 1980.

• We can keep tax breaks for the rich in place, or make needed investments, "but we can't do both." Not true. Repealing the Bush tax cuts on the "rich" would raise only about $70 billion a year, a tiny fraction of projected deficits. With or without the Bush tax cuts, the country can't afford Obama's agenda.

Not at all - most people are horrified at Obama's naked marxism. I have three or four people I was friends with who wont speak to me, but fuck em, if you are that brain dead, incompetent, illiterate, inept, and stupid to vote for this disaster again, i want nothing to do with you.

Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of smart people. And over the last four years we have heard countless encomiums, and not just from Democrats, of the intellect and perceptiveness of Barack Obama. But a reading of the text of Obama’s December 6 speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, billed as one of his big speeches of the year, shows him to be something like the opposite.

Even by the standards of campaign rhetoric, this is a shockingly shoddy piece of work. You can start with his intellectually indefensible caricature of Republican philosophy: “We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.” Or his simple factual inaccuracy: “The wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century.” Or his infantile economic analysis, blaming job losses on the invention of the automated teller machine (they’ve been around for more than four decades, Mr. President, and we’ve had lots of job growth during that time) and the Internet.

But what’s really staggering is the weakness of his public policy arguments. The long-term unsustainability of our entitlement programs he blames solely on the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts—an explanation no serious observer regards as anything but incomplete, to say the least. He points to growing income inequality and to remedy it advocates policies that are utterly inadequate to the task. We need to be “making education a national mission,” he says, and in essence argues for channeling more money to teacher union members.

He calls for a “world class commitment to science and research, the next generation of high-tech manufacturing,” which brings to mind the bankruptcy of Solyndra and the fiasco of channeling billions to green industries which produce few jobs or products anyone wants to buy. He calls for reducing unemployment by “rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools—all the things that other countries are already doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.” That sounds like more stimulus package spending on nonexistent shovel-ready projects.

“In the long term we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally,” the president who declined the invitation of his own Bowles-Simpson commission to propose broad-based tax reform. His only idea on offer is to increase tax rates on high earners, which of course tends to redirect their animal spirits away from productive investment and toward tax avoidance schemes. And he calls on banks to do more for mortgage holders, without mentioning that administration programs to encourage such activity have helped far, far fewer people than projected.

What we have here, it seems a president who has no serious interest in public policy. He has spent nearly half his 15 years in public office running for other public office. The only difference now is that, having run out of higher offices to run for, he is just running for reelection instead. Those who pride themselves on belonging to the party of smart people should be embarrassed.

The Osawatomie Speech: A Defining Moment In HistorySubmitted by Econophile on 12/09/2011 14:14 -0500

This article originally appeared in the Daily Capitalist.

COMMENTARY

I am not a fan of Barack Obama, but I have not criticized him as harshly as many other writers do. I have a different view of him. I see him as a rather run of the mill Progressive/Liberal who firmly believes his ideology and acts somewhat consistently on those ideas. Rather than pillory him personally, my approach has been to criticize the philosophy of which he is a product. In my mind, it's all about ideas. I detest his ideas because I believe they are anti-intellectual and they don't work.

There are many like Mr. Obama out there. His admirers perceive themselves as being the "downtrodden", envious of the accomplishments and wealth of those whose abilities they cannot match. I get that: if you can't achieve it, take it from those who can. Even those limousine liberals who have wealth and accomplishment perceive themselves as either being guilty of their wealth or come from backgrounds where these ideas are passed along. Mr. Obama is no different than any other politician: he seeks power and admiration and the ability to impose his ideas on America.

We here at the Daily Capitalist try everyday to combat those ideas by demonstrating their lack of efficacy and by presenting analyses of events in a free market framework which analyses have actually been quite accurate in forecasting economic outcomes. We try to be the antidote to the Progressive juggernaut.

And then I heard President Obama's speech at Osawatomie, Kansas this week.

It perhaps wasn't surprising, but I was appalled. It was deceitful, inaccurate, revisionist, and demagogic.

Mr. Obama uses every cliché in the Progressive handbook to make his point. His direct point was that the "rich" should pay more taxes. The underlying point and theme of his speech was that individual effort, individualism, free market capitalism, and success is a gift bestowed by "society" on the successful and that what "society" grants, it can take away because "society" needs it. It is the collective versus the individual.

His speech is a recreation, a fabrication if you will, of history, economics, and philosophy into a Pandoran construct of collectivist statism whereby society can demand the individual's obedience and obeisance. In short, folks, it's a crock.

If you think I am exaggerating, I urge you to read or hear his entire speech. You may find the full text and video of the speech here.

Here is just one typical statement from his speech:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

This is the stuff that demagogues spew to the guileless. And the problem is that he believes it with all his heart. The man is not stupid nor slow on his feet, despite what his harshest critics day. He's not a mere puppet of the union bosses. He's bright, articulate, and well educated. Yet he has learned nothing despite his years of education and now he's at the vanguard of the Progessive/socialist/welfare statist/national corporatist movement in America. If he has the force of personality he could be another Franklin Roosevelt, the president who did more harm to America than any other leader in our history. Fortunately, he may not have that strength of character.

While we may criticize the Republicans for being much of the same, there is still a difference. We are, as I have noted before, at a tipping point in America where:

Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.

No wonder the audience at Osawatomie loved him.

This is what has happened to much of Europe where welfare recipients voted themselves increasing benefits and economic stagnation and eventual bankruptcy. This is exactly where we are headed politically.

And this is why this election is critical. We must turn this ship around.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will host a star-studded roster of music legends April 9 for another glitzy installment in the “In Performance at the White House” concert series, according to a White House press released issued Tuesday.

The concert comes as the White House is emphasizing cuts caused by sequestration and criticizing reporters for not paying enough attention to the hardship caused by the mandatory slowdown in the rate of spending increases. Though the White House notably canceled all visitor tours in March, ostensibly due to sequestration, the First Couple’s series of White House concerts — billed as “the nation’s highest honor for popular song” — manages to survive.

Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake and Booker T. Jones are among the performers confirmed for the event.

Ads by Google

“‘In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul’ will be broadcast Tuesday, April 16 at 8 PM ET on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings),” according to the press release. Although the PBS website indicates past concerts have drawn corporate and philanthropic support, the event also receives major funding from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gets $445.2 million in public funding. It is not clear how much the White House will pay in security and other costs.

“In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul” will be the tenth “In Performance at the White House” program hosted by the President and Mrs. Obama. Starting in February 2009, these events have honored the musical genius of Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David; celebrated Hispanic musical heritage during Hispanic Heritage Month; marked Black History Month with events featuring music from the Civil Rights Movement, Motown and the Blues; spotlighted Broadway and the unique spirit of the American musical; and explored the rich roots and resiliency of Country Music,” according to the White House press release.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will host a star-studded roster of music legends April 9 for another glitzy installment in the “In Performance at the White House” concert series, according to a White House press released issued Tuesday.

The concert comes as the White House is emphasizing cuts caused by sequestration and criticizing reporters for not paying enough attention to the hardship caused by the mandatory slowdown in the rate of spending increases. Though the White House notably canceled all visitor tours in March, ostensibly due to sequestration, the First Couple’s series of White House concerts — billed as “the nation’s highest honor for popular song” — manages to survive.

Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake and Booker T. Jones are among the performers confirmed for the event.

Ads by Google

“‘In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul’ will be broadcast Tuesday, April 16 at 8 PM ET on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings),” according to the press release. Although the PBS website indicates past concerts have drawn corporate and philanthropic support, the event also receives major funding from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gets $445.2 million in public funding. It is not clear how much the White House will pay in security and other costs.

“In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul” will be the tenth “In Performance at the White House” program hosted by the President and Mrs. Obama. Starting in February 2009, these events have honored the musical genius of Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David; celebrated Hispanic musical heritage during Hispanic Heritage Month; marked Black History Month with events featuring music from the Civil Rights Movement, Motown and the Blues; spotlighted Broadway and the unique spirit of the American musical; and explored the rich roots and resiliency of Country Music,” according to the White House press release.

Tonight’s special White House “celebration” of Memphis soul music marks the tenth time President and Mrs. Obama have been treated to an exclusive East Room “command performance” of American music featuring major stars, past and present.

While the performances are televised and celebrate the nation’s culture, some may wonder whether during an era of soaring deficits it is wise to stage what are also in effect private parties for the first couple.

And with this evening’s event, the performances are officially part of the “sequester-free zone” at the White House. As is well known, the daily White House tours did not make the cut.

The Obamas suspended the performances during the campaign season, either because they were too busy or because they thought average voters might not be pleased by the sight of them partying it up as unemployment continues to rage. The last “In Performance at the White House” was a May 8, 2012 event celebrating of the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The show included performance by Sheryl Crow, Mike Myers and Stevie Wonder.

Tonight’s extravaganza will feature Justin Timberlake, Queen Latifah, and Cyndi Lauper along with a cadre of old blues and soul stars.

Other White House performances have centered on the blues, country music, jazz, and Motown and have featured megastars like Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, B.B. King, and James Taylor.